Panic's experiences on iOS have been somewhat unsatisfying: https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-transmit-ios/

It seems that (at least up to January 2018) the market for (relatively expensive) pro apps on iPad is just too small.

Wow, glad I got Transmit when I did, even if I didn't realize for over an entire year that they stopped selling it. I had a reason to use it just this weekend when I needed to be able to download something on iOS from Safari for import to another program. Since Transmit could receive anything, I sent the file there, then because Transmit is a file provider, could use it to import to the other, less flexible program. Since it wasn't free, I tested it on my iPad before suggesting the workflow to someone else, but was frustrated that I couldn't find it in the App Store. I guess this explains it, and I guess I'm part of the problem, using it so infrequently.

If this new editor isn't free out of the gate, I am doubtful I'll even try it. I love the stuff of theirs that I own, but I'm not sure I'm willing to gamble on their apps any longer. At least the Mac versions tend to have free trials.

Depends on the pro apps.

In the age of iCloud, Dropbox, and 200 other services and alternative ways to move stuff, why would one want to use a FTP client (like the Transmit above) on the iPad?

The market for FTP clients is small enough on the desktop...

(Heck, I'm a developer, I have a Transmit license since 2006 or so, I work with dozens of remote machines, and seldom ever use it. It's either sftp on the command line, or something like an Ansible wrapper etc).

Transmit on iOS is not only a FTP client and I never used it for that. The integration into the iOS share sheet with SSH file transfer support is perfect for me and I use this all the time. Are there any reliable alternatives that are still actively developed?

Yeah, I know, I have a license for it on OS X. It also does SCP/SFTP/S3 and others. But in the end it's still a pretty limited offering, for special cases (geeks wanting to use the iPad for administration or development, for example).

Not the kind of mass market app the general iPad users would buy en masse.

Also lftp has been working since the middle ages and will continue to do so. Cross platform.

The point is that convenient file transfer is a long solved problem with nice foss tools that are never going to stop working because of consumer market shifts.

I feared the same thing but Panic assured me via Twitter that Coda for iOS isn’t dead. Of course this might not mean that they are not abandoning the old app rather than bringing the new one to iOS. I remain hopeful.

https://twitter.com/panic/status/1105999898208419840

One of the secret reveals they do later could be it's made in Marzipan, so easily ported to iOS.

If they bring an amazing editor to the iPad, they'll have my attention

>At a time when Apples actions seem like they are de-prioritizing the line,

Nobody is "de-prioritizing the line".

They literally have an advertising segment on iPad with the tagline being "What's a computer?"

Which is made to sell iPads. Not to deprioritize MacBooks...

They also have ads about how you can load a eSIM on your Apple Watch and make calls without an iPhone. But they aren't deprioritizing the iPhone any day soon...

>Also, FU everytime something is just built for macOS. It's such poor stewardship (at the very least for everyone who isn't Apple) to reinforce the walled garden that is macOS.

Really? If the non-walled garden of Linux is so wonderful, what's your problem? Other people shouldn't write the software they like for the platforms they enjoy?

I like to be able to depend on a software with commercial ties, that doesn't change when some community gets bored and has different whims (e.g. "let's redefine everything people know about Gnome 2", or "let's write the n-th audio framework").

And that also attracts major commercial packages like the Creative Suite, DAWs, VSTs, etc -- stuff which I depend on, and with no real match on FOSS world.

Well, I understand why one wants to use a native GUI toolkit (Cocoa) instead of a more generic but cross platform one (for instance Qt). GUIs just feel smoother. This has always been a thing for Mac OS applications -- but interestingly never so much for Windows applications, because look and feel was always prioritized in the designer-addicted Mac world. I like that -- the Mac UIs always used to feel high quality and polished. Nevertheless I'm a 15yrs Linux user and pay the price of the Gtk/Qt "uglinesss" for my freedom (it's not so ugly any more :D ).

Do you believe developers think: "I could make a lot of money developing software for Linux but I'm not going to bother because I love walled gardens."?

Or do they perhaps think: "I can build a viable business on MacOS so that's where I'll invest my time and energy.".

Do not use it then.

Applications should use the native GUI APIs for the OS they are running on, native GUI APIs are not there for shits and giggles, they provide actual functionality and not using them is a waste of resources. Linux having the desktop equivalent of ADHD is an example to avoid, not to mimic.

I feel the opposite. Cross-platform toolkits such as Qt are "good enough" but not great. I wish more apps would be written using the native toolkit of the platform.

What, so now I’m a developer who has an idea for an app and I must develop it for macOS, all the flavours of Unix, Windows, Android, iOS, and the web?